Kilowatt Usage
Electricity is metered by measuring the current through a motor
installed outside the structure in a little glass case. As more current
flows, the motor runs faster and it makes the little numbers the meter
reader records advance faster. It is billed by the kilowatt-hour,
with one kilowatt-hour being the amount of electricity used by a 100
watt bulb in 10 hours.
The measurement used by electric companinies is generally the
kilowatt hour, which means that you used 1000 watts of energy for an hour.
This electrical energy is used for any electrical device that is used by the
store. This includes lights, heaters, air conditioners, registers,
scanners, etc.
Each device consumes energy at a different rate, and adds to the total
amount of energy used.
Lights are generally given a wattage that tells you how much energy they
use. For example, if you have 10, 100 Wat light bulbs on for an hour, that
will use 1 kilo-watt hour of energy.
Some devices measure the power they use in Amps. That can be converted to
Watts by multiplying the voltage and the amp rating. For example, if you
have a 5 Amp motor which operates a saw and runs on 110 Volts, it uses 550
Watts of energy, and would use a kilowatt hour up in an 1 hour, 50 minutes.
Other devices may measure their energy consumption in horse power, and you
may have to convert that to watts--1 hp is equal to 746 watts.
So, to determine how much energy something in the store uses up, find out
how many watts of energy the device uses, and multiply that by the number
hours it is on during the month, and then divide by 1000 to get kilo watt
hours.
Obviously doing that for every device in the store would be a time consuming
process. But, generally, heaters, lights, motors, scanners, printers,
copiers, microwaves, stoves are high-energy consuming devices.
The light company attaches a meter to the incoming power meter to the structure.
This meter measures how much electricity passes through it and turns faster
when more energy is flowing, which sets some dials. This works very much
like your car odometer. Each month the power company records the number on
the meter, and subtracts the current number from last months to figure out
how many kilowatt hours were used.
Then, based on how many kilowatt hours used, they will bill you.
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